The MechatronicUML Code Generator for Distributed Cyber-Physical Systems

Demonstrating the real-time execution of the software in distributed cyber-physical systems like vehicles in a realistic way, e.g., in the context of teaching students at universities, often requires a real car which is costly and hard to acquire. Therefore, we present an approach for using the MechatronicUML to model structural and behavioral aspects of the software for vehicles and generate code that we deploy and run on robot cars in our laboratory environment. We demonstrate this approach with an exemplary application scenario that comprises two vehicles driving on a road and exchanging information to prepare for a cooperative overtaking through a remotely deployed message broker. After adding support for our robot car hardware platform in an existing code generator for MechatronicUML, the robot cars could execute this scenario as envisioned with the generated code. The approach allows us to model distributed cyber-physical systems in a realistic way while demonstrating them in a simplified setup that is accessible to students. A video showcasing this demonstration can be accessed at https://youtu.be/8XgSudDxDB4.